They don’t pave the road in front of my house. A big truck comes by once a month to drop fresh gravel, which gives the road some grip, but not as much as a paved road would.
So I could blame it on the traction.
The sunsets here are powerful. They’re so bright they can blind you with their brilliance, especially if you’re driving at dusk. They say most accidents occur at that time.
So I could blame it on the time of day.
The hills on my road are steep, with its houses spread out along it, for four miles. I live in the middle, about a half mile past the Johnson’s and a quarter mile before the Fletcher’s. The Johnson’s live two miles in, at the bottom of a steep hill. You have to slow to a crawl as you approach because you can't see well.
So I could blame it on poor visibility.
I could blame it on a lot of things, but honestly, I didn’t see it happen. I only felt it. And as soon as I felt it, I stopped and got out to see what I’d hit. I figured it was a rabbit, or at worst, a dog. But there was also a sensation of guilt, as I got out, which came from my brain, but I felt it in my chest.
A thick cloud of dust from the gravel surrounded me as I pushed my door open. It hit my nostrils and I coughed the way I did when my father smoked after dinner.
My heart seized when I saw the tricycle.
I stepped back, looked behind me, and saw nothing.
I then looked ahead, and also saw nothing. I was at the bottom of the hill. The only way to see me would have been to come down the hill from either direction.
The tricycle had a red seat and yellow handlebars. The front wheel was black and made out of plastic, but it was bent and facing the wrong way, in front of my truck, and next to that, the tricycle, lay the boy. I recognized him, but couldn’t remember his name. He was born a few years ago in '96, right after the election.
I called out, “You okay?” but the boy didn’t answer. Or move.
He looked small.
I was wearing old, thin gloves because it was the end of winter. I reached out and touched the boy’s neck and it felt warm, but he didn’t stir.
I repeated myself. “You okay?”
No answer.
I looked around me, in all directions, and it was the same as before. We were alone.
I felt the boy’s neck again, but this time I did it like how I see them do it on the TV and in the movies, using two fingers to check for a pulse.
I felt nothing.
The boy was not okay. The boy was dead.
I stood. My head and shoulders were trembling and I felt pressure around my bulging eyes, and I wasn't shaking from the cold.
I turned around to face the grill of my truck. There was blood and some of the boy’s blonde hair stuck to the bottom. I turned around to look at the boy. His face was down, so I turned his body over, very carefully, and the only evidence was a wound on his scalp, on the side that had been facing the gravel. Just a nick, with some hair missing. That was all.
I stood and looked around again.
No one.
Look, I’m sixty-four years old. I'm retiring at the end of this year. I have no family. I eat canned soup for dinner most nights and never go out. Most of my evenings are spent watching the television and imagining a life I never lived and a future that will never exist.
Nowhere, in any of my dreams or my nightmares, do I end up being known as and hated for being the man who accidentally killed a little boy.
That would not be fair.
I squinted at the gravel and saw three faint marks in the shape of my boots, so I walked over and kicked the gravel with my heel until the prints smeared away. I then walked in a full circle around my truck, eyeing my surroundings closely. Since I hadn’t slammed the brakes, there were no tire marks behind me.
I returned to the body. I’d only touched it twice, and both times, I’d touched it with my gloves. But just to be sure, I plucked a blade of grass and wiped the spot on the neck where I’d felt for a pulse. Then, stepping carefully, as if there were grapes under my feet that I didn’t want to crush, I took long strides back to my truck and got inside.
I checked all three mirrors and didn’t see a thing.
The sun was setting, but I couldn't appreciate it.
Look, it is not my destiny to go to prison. Not now, not ever. I eat canned meals for dinner and I never married. I worked hard all my life and I never hurt anyone on purpose.
So I started the truck, put it in reverse, and inched back, to create ample room. I then put it in drive and drove around the boy and the tricycle, being sure to move at a speed that wouldn’t create any tracks, and just like that, I crawled on up the hill towards my home.
My heart was pounding. I kept checking the mirrors to see if anyone was watching. As I passed the Johnson’s, I couldn't see anyone inside or outside. However, just in case somebody was watching, I pretended I was whistling to the radio.
I got home in two minutes and went directly to my bathroom where I ran the faucet while I rolled up a giant wad of toilet paper to sprinkle with water.
I took the wet toilet paper and applied it to the spot on the grill that still had blood and hair, but then I frowned. The grill was too shiny. I picked up some gravel and threw it at the grill and felt my muscles relax as the dust settled on the wet parts and made it look normal again. Normal for this part of the country.
I looked up. The sun had set, and it was no longer dusk. Satisfied, I went inside to fix a can of soup, so I could eat, watch some television, and get to bed.
***
I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept thinking about prison and the men I’d known who'd ended there. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve a lot of the bullshit I’d dealt with in my life. So I decided that night, that for once in my life, I was going to stand up for myself.
***
It was on the front page of the local paper the next morning. I saw it at work because someone left it in the break room. But by lunch, everyone was talking about it.
Margie, the one with big hips and the stupid pictures of her nieces and nephews, she just wouldn’t shut up.
It was so sad and so tragic and she just couldn’t believe that someone would leave a child to die.
Fuck her. Fuck her and her Minnie Mouse picture frames, I thought as I watched her cry about the whole thing while she inhaled chocolate cake with a spoon. Every time she sobbed, she'd poke at the brown icing at the top of the cake, giving it more attention than she ever gave to her job, and I soon found myself wishing she'd choke on it.
By quitting time, I’d had enough. Everyone at work, even the customers, they were all talking about the Johnson boy. At one point, even Ed walked over to me to ask, “Don’t you live on the same road as the Johnson’s?” to which I nodded and did my best to look glum.
The hardest part was going home. There was only one way to drive there, so there was no avoiding it. I had to pass right by the spot, then on up the hill, past the Johnson’s. Every day.
But I got used to it. Besides, I don’t have any friends and I never go out, so I only had to pass it twice a day, five days a week, and then maybe two or four more times, on the weekend, when I had to run an errand.
***
Four days had passed before the first time I nearly lost my nerve. It was just a little after work. I’d already passed the damn house, which by now was barely visible beyond the endless lines of wreathes and flowers and candles and such. The whole town was making it such a big deal.
I was settling into my evening routine when I heard a knock on the door.
No one ever comes by. Last time I had a visitor is when the electric guy checked on the utilities two years ago. Only relative I got that's still alive is my brother who's ten years my junior, and he moved west with some gal 25 years ago, and I haven’t seen him since.
I heard a second knock, but I just stood there, in my own kitchen, too scared to move. I could feel my heart going all crazy again. It wasn’t “pounding” so much as threatening to stop. It was going about all weird in my chest, and I started wondering if this was it—if they were here to take me in, so I decided then and there that if this was it, I would stay quiet and wait.
So I waited, in my own damn kitchen, like a prisoner, listening. At first, I only heard birds chirping. But then, then I heard some feet scuffling on the gravel that leads to my door.
My heart started really pounding and I don’t know if I was more nervous about the trouble I was in or about my heart exploding, but then, right when I couldn't take it anymore, I heard the a child’s say, “I know he’s there. His truck is parked and he never goes out after work.”
Whoever it was, it wasn’t the police.
My heart settled as I used a towel to dab the beads of sweat percolating on my forehead.
After the third knock, I opened the door to see Evelyn Woodbury and her son—I forget his name.
I nodded and Evelyn nodded back with a polite smile. I’d known her since she was little and I was a young man. She’d married some guy from out of town and I remember she was showing before the wedding.
“How do you do, Roger?” She seemed a bit frightened, and I didn’t mind.
I nodded again, then looked down at her boy and back up at her. She wore a sundress that was a little too tight. It also looked worn, and I thought she looked a little worn herself.
“Well, Roger, sorry to bother you at supper, but...” she stopped talking but forgot to close her mouth.
The boy cut in. “Sir, we’re holding a fundraiser for Willie Johnson. I’m sure you heard—he was killed by a car, sir, so we’re collecting money, through the school, for his family, so they can afford a nice funeral.”
So they wanted money. Everyone in this world seems to want your hard earned cash. First the government asks for it from your pay check. Then they ask again in April, and then you pay them more with sales tax, every time you want to buy something. That's why I try to stay at home and keep to myself.
I reached in my back pocket for my wallet then opened it. Inside were some bills, and I knew exactly how many and of which denomination as well. I reached for the third one over, a five, and handed it to the boy with my best forced smile.
Evelyn relaxed and tugged at her dress, as if that could make it fit, or make her look better. I don’t know. I don’t understand women.
They thanked me for my generous donation, and I nodded once, then stood there with my hand holding the door open to watch them walk down the gravel path before turning left onto the road. There were another two miles of houses in that direction, and I wondered if they were really going to walk to each one and bother everyone's supper. I watched them until they were out of sight, then shut the door.
***
The more the papers kept writing about it and the townsfolk kept talking about it, the more angry I got, and eventually I got more mad than guilty and my worry slowly went away, like snow in early Spring.
They also talked about it on the news, which I didn't used to watch, but I'd started watching nearly every night. There was something weird about watching a mystery unfold and being the only one who knew the answers to the questions everyone else wanted to know. Plus, I wanted to be sure they weren’t on to me. And so far, they didn’t have any suspects, but the police were investigating, and the case was open.
***
The most scared I ever got was the day Officer Thompson came by. It was at the same time that Evelyn and her boy had come—at dusk. Only this time I wasn’t making soup from a can. I was cooking a microwave dinner. I know this because it was Wednesday, when I always eat a microwave dinner.
He knocked real hard. Harder than Evelyn. Not unfriendly, but just the right kind to let you know that it deserves an answer.
I walked over and opened the door and Officer Thompson nodded his head and removed his hat. I nodded back and stepped to the side so he could enter if he wanted to.
He did not. “Afternoon, Roger.”
“Fred.”
“We’re…” He sighed, and as I waited for him to continue, I heard the microwave doing its thing, and realized that now that my stomach was all tight, I'd lost my appetite.
I frowned, just as Fred resumed speaking. “Well, we’re just combing the whole road is what we’re doing. The Johnson boy, as you know, well, we don’t have much, but we figure whoever killed the boy, well, he probably lives on this road, since it’s got a dead end.”
Then he stopped. Right there. No question. Just a statement. And what this did was to put me on guard, it did. I wasn’t sure if it was tactical, or if I was just paranoid, but I felt stuck, the way you do when your boss asks you if you’d mind staying late. I didn’t know what to say.
Fred's my age. We went to school together. He married Anne Walsh and they had several kids. One even went on to State with a scholarship for football. Now I don’t watch football, but I was born and raised here, so I know everything you could know about it.
Anyway, Fred was looking right at me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I don’t read my own mind, let alone the minds of other folks. Forty-six years of insurance math has taught me very little about people and what they are thinking. “Well, it’s sad,” I finally said.
He broke eye contact and sighed again. “Sure is.”
He seemed relieved, but I wanted to be sure. “I think an awful lot about it,” I said. “Some nights,” I added. I didn't want to sound obsessed.
“We all do.” He wrung his hat in his hands, treating it like a bandana instead of a state-issued trooper hat and I thought he was going to permanently crease it, but he didn’t.
The next thing I did is what saved me, I’m sure of it, so I’m very glad I did it. “The Fletcher boy," I said. "He speeds.” Five words. That’s all I had to say. It was just like when my father taught me how to make plants grow. He wanted me to take over the farm, but I was good at math and didn’t like agriculture, so I took the job at the firm instead. But there I was, sixty years later, following my dad’s professional advice. Planting a seed to nurture so it could grow.
TO BE CONTINUED…
This week Coffin Talk welcomes Houston Pierce, the host of "1000 Crazy Questions." He can talk about almost any topic and thrives in deep conversations. He’s also a lover and critic of films. Listen here.
Tough read; great imagination! What a dismal, sad life!
Great story…looking forward to reading the next installment!